If good investing is boring, George Soros must be the dullest investor on earth.
The controversial billionaire once said, "If investing is entertaining, if you're having fun, you're probably not making any money."
"Good investing is boring," he declared.
It's hard to argue that point with a man worth nearly seven billion bucks. If you're wondering about the secret of Soros' success-- quite a tongue-twister-- the 93-year-old has a simple formula.
"I'm only rich because I know when I'm wrong," he said.
Born in Hungary in 1930, Soros studied at the London School of Economics and started his career working in British and American merchant banks.
Soros became known as "The Man Who Broke the Bank of England" due to his short sale of $10 billion worth of pounds sterling, which made him a profit of $1 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crisis.
Soros' 13F filing sheds light on his fund's trades
Soros has donated billions of dollars to various causes through the Open Society Foundations, founded in 1993, with branches in about 37 countries.
In 1970, he founded Soros Fund Management, which had assets under management of around $5.26 billion at the end of last year.
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Investment funds with more than $100 million in assets must notify the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding portfolio changes. The reports, known as 13F filings, are backdated to the end of the previous quarter.
While they do not include the full scope of holdings nor possible bets against a particular security, they provide a glimpse into the investment strategies used by some of the world's biggest investors, including Soros.
Among other changes, Soros Fund Management sold off its entire stake in Arm Holdings (ARM) , the chipmaker owned by Japan's SoftBank.
In addition, Soros Fund Management bought 595,000 shares of KeyCorp (KEY) , the holding company for KeyBank, which are valued at $8.6 million, according to the filing.
KeyBank, one of the nation's largest bank-based financial services companies, is a regional bank headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. It has roughly $188 billion in assets and operates about 1,000 branches across 15 states.
Soros Fund Management's first KeyCorp trade was made in the first quarter of 2011, according to Stockcircle. Since then, Soros has traded in and out of the stock multiple times.
So far, assuming Soros still holds the position, he could be up around 20% on his latest purchase.
Bank says capital position 'remains strong'
Last month, KeyCorp reported fourth-quarter earnings of 25 cents a share on $928 million in net interest income, which beat the FactSet consensus of 23 cents a share in earnings and $912.4 in net interest income.
The company earned 38 cents a share and $1.2 billion in net interest income a year ago.
More 13F fund holdings:
- Warren Buffett just sold shares of this popular streaming stock
- Paul Tudor Jones’ hedge fund just made a big bet on Nvidia stock
- Stanley Druckenmiller just sold two AI tech stocks
During the company's earnings call last month, Chris Gorman, the bank's chairman and CEO, said that the "fourth quarter closes out a challenging year for the industry and for Key."
"While our business fundamentals remain solid throughout the year, we acknowledge that our balance sheet coming into the year was not well positioned for the rapid rise in interest rates that transpired," Gorman told analysts, according to a transcript of the call.
Gorman said the company reorganized in November, and “these actions we took in ’23 impacted 6% of our teammates.”
"We do not take these decisions lightly, but the reality is, we need to make the difficult decisions today to earn the right to invest in the opportunities of tomorrow," he said. "Overall, our capital position remains strong."
After the earnings release, analysts at Wedbush, DA Davidson, and Piper Sandler all cut their price targets on KeyCorp.
More recently, Morgan Stanley boosted its price target on the company by $4 to $16 while maintaining an equal weight rating on the shares.
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